To ensure your voting experience runs smoothly, here are six things you should know.
Montgomery Advertiser

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A Woman's March is held on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Al., on Saturday morning January 20, 2018. The theme of the march was Power to the Polls and it was sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.(Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)Buy Photo

Roderick Bass can’t remember the last candidate he voted for, his memory now smudged like bubbles on a filled-in ballot.

He remembers it was a 1984 election in Florida. After a judge found Bass guilty of drug possession three years later, he remembers being told he'd never vote again.

“When I went to court and was found guilty, they told me I’d lose my voting rights. … I didn’t realize at the time because of my lifestyle, but that’s a lot to lose,” said Bass, who moved to Alabama 14 years ago.

"When your voice no longer means anything, that takes a lot from someone."

Prior to the passage of the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act in 2017, Alabama had one of the highest rates of felony disenfranchisement.(Photo: Contributed by The Sentencing Project)

But the passage of the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act in 2017 — which defined the crimes that do and don't preclude those previously convicted of felonies from voting — was a victory for voting rights activists and established clear, objective guidelines for re-enfranchisement of Alabamians. That includes Bass, who successfully registered to vote in September.

On Tuesday, the 52-year-old Bass will cast a vote for the first time in 34 years alongside a few thousand previously convicted citizens whose rights to participate in democracy have been restored.

That's approximately 8 percent of registered voters and 13 percent of the number of ballots cast in the state's 2016 general election. (For perspective, U.S. Sen. Doug Jones defeated former Chief Justice Roy Moore by 21,900 votes in 2017.)

Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles assistant executive director Darrell Morgan said he's seen a "spike" in applications for reinstatement since the passage of the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act, but because no centralized list of newly registered ex-felons exists, the success of the Act cannot be tied to a hard figure.

Nonprofits managing grassroots voting reinstatement efforts across the state estimate a few thousand have regained their right to vote this election season.

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A Woman's March is held on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Al., on Saturday morning January 20, 2018. The theme of the march was Power to the Polls and it was sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.(Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)

One such program, the Alabama Voting Rights Project, is a collaboration between the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Campaign Legal Center and has helped 1,205 formerly incarcerated citizens register to vote or apply for a CERV as of the end of October.

In Montgomery, Kynesha Brown said her Rolling to the Polls Initiative has assisted more than 50 ex-felons in registering to vote.

"It's been kind of an uphill battle, but I think it's been effective so far," Brown said.

Prior to the passage of the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act last year, no clear legal standard for restoring voting rights existed in Alabama for people like Bass, who had served their time but were told — or assumed — they'd never vote again.

The 1901 Alabama Constitution removed the right to vote from anyone convicted of a crime of “moral turpitude.”

Exactly what that was, however, was up for interpretation.

"It was up to the individual registrars. Some of them would allow you your voting rights. Some of them wouldn’t. That’s why there was a disparity all over the state," Morgan said.

An excerpt of the 1901 Alabama Constitution which excludes those convicted of "any infamous crime or crime involving moral turpitude" from voting.(Photo: Alabama Department of Archives and History)

Morgan said the most divisive crimes were drug offenses like Bass', non-trafficking charges that many, but not all, counties frowned upon.

"That was a lot of ambiguity in the law that caused a lot of chaos. Some of the lower theft crimes, too," Morgan said.

Don Milligan, president of the Alabama Association of the Boards of Registrars, said an informal list of crimes of moral turpitude had circulated among the registrars in an effort to build a consensus prior to the act's passage last year, but Milligan called the new law "priceless."

"It has really taken that responsibility off the registrars," Milligan said.

Even those charged with crimes of moral turpitude can potentially reinstate their right to vote if they successfully apply for a pardon or a Certificate of Eligibility to Register to Vote (CERV) with the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

For Bass, it was as straightforward as registering online. Last month, he received a card in the mail informing him of his Foley poll location.

"I was ecstatic," Bass said. "I feel like I’m being restored just being able to go out and vote. I live a crime-free life. I pay my taxes and go to work every day. But just that simple thing that I can vote, it’s like, hey, my voice does matter today."

Obstacles remain

Advocacy organizations still see areas for improvement.

Ex-felons who qualify for a CERV cannot have their voting rights restored without first paying all outstanding debts associated with their conviction (although they can request a remission of fines and fees from the Board of Pardons and Paroles).

Southern Poverty Law Center Outreach Coordinator Lecia Brooks also said the organization had to push for prison or jail IDs to be accepted when ex-felons attempt to get an Alabama voter ID.

"For many who get out, that’s the only ID they have," Brooks said.

The primary issue, however, seems to be that many disenfranchised voters are unaware they can now register to vote.

Voters arrive to vote at the polls located at Dalraida Church of Christ in Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday September 26, 2017. Tuesday is the Republican runoff in the U.S. Senate race.(Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)

Dana Sweeney, an Alabama Appleseed organizer working to restore voting rights in the River Region through the Puffin Democracy Fellowship, has twice canvassed Montgomery's Capitol Heights neighborhood, knocking on the doors of all whose voter registration applications were previously denied.

"One of the things that has really stood out to me is people at the doors often haven’t heard about the change in the law," Sweeney said.

Ellen Boettcher, a re-enfranchisement outreach fellow for the Voting Rights Project, has spent the past four months knocking on doors, posting flyers and phone banking in south Alabama.

Some she's met — including Bass — had heard about the passage of the act. Far more haven't.

One man who had been denied the right to vote in 2016 due to a third-degree burglary conviction didn't believe Boettcher when she told him he wouldn't be denied again.

"He went down to the registrar, and I have the most uplifting voicemail I’ve ever received in my life. The same woman who denied him the right to vote two years ago reinstated his right to vote," Boettcher said.

But the encounter was emblematic of a larger problem.

"The majority of the people I assisted didn't know they were allowed to register to vote after the law change. ... If you were denied the right to vote a few years ago, you’re not going to try again," Boettcher said.

Boettcher, Sweeney and others who made it their pre-election mission to register ex-felons across the state see it as the Secretary of State's Office's responsibility to inform those citizens.

As part of a recent report published by Alabama Appleseed that interviewed nearly 900 Alabamians with outstanding court debt, Sweeney found that 55 percent were not registered to vote due to a criminal conviction and that 72 percent had not heard of the change in the law.

The issue is made more contentious by the fact that the disenfranchisement of those with felony records affects 1 in 13 black voters compared to 1 in 56 non-black voters, according to The Sentencing Project.

Prior to the passage of the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act in 2017, Alabama had one of the highest rates of felony disenfranchisement, which disproportionately affects the state's African-American population.(Photo: Contributed by The Sentencing Project)

"That’s one of the primary points of contention, I think, between voting rights advocates and the Secretary of State’s Office right now, is that the state has demonstrably wronged and harmed tens to hundreds of thousands of Alabamians by stripping their voting rights in error and is now refusing to take proactive action to correct that error," Sweeney said.

Secretary of State John Merrill said his office has made presentations on the subject to groups that have requested them, and John Bennett, his deputy chief of staff, said press releases were sent to media organizations after the law was signed.

Morgan said flyers were put in courthouses, election centers, and registrars' offices and that anybody on parole or probation is informed of the process for restoration.

However, many of the affected ex-felons are years removed from completing their sentences.

That's put the burden on nonprofits and community organizations to get the word out.

"I think in this state, you have to take the steps to find out what you need to do. We get a lot of calls from people that are still eligible that didn’t know they were still eligible. We’ll call them up and tell them they never lost that ability to vote," Morgan said.

Mary Thomas, a Tuscaloosa resident who lost her right to vote after a 2011 marijuana possession charge, said she didn't know she could register to vote again.

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A step in the right direction

Despite potential areas for improvement, Boettcher said many of those she's met have been empowered by the list of disqualifying convictions, an objective determiner of voting rights that ex-felons can use to personally defend themselves.

Alabama's restoration of voting rights to those with criminal records is also part of a larger trend nationwide and other Southern states could soon follow suit.

Florida voters have a chance to pass Amendment 4 on Election Day, which would automatically restore the right to vote for those previously convicted of felonies, excluding those previously charged with murder and sexual offenses.

In Mississippi, which like Florida automatically bans citizens with certain felony convictions from voting, two ongoing lawsuits — one by the SPLC — seek to lift the lifetime voting ban.

For Alabamians, Tuesday's midterms mark the first general election since the passage of the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act, and a few thousand more ballots will be counted as a result.

"We’ve got more rights to vote than ever before and more people registered than ever before," Milligan said.

For those who have restored their rights, the ability to once again have a voice in the political discourse is invaluable.

"I want people to know that if you remain crime free, you can get your voting rights back," Bass said. "It’s just a beautiful thing for your voice to be heard."